U.S. Military at War with PowerPoint
Consultants and U.S. military commanders apparently have something in common: both have a disproportionate dependence on PowerPoint.

"Like an insurgency, PowerPoint has crept into the daily lives of military commanders and reached the level of near obsession," the New York Times recently reported. "The amount of time expended on PowerPoint, the Microsoft presentation program of computer-generated charts, graphs and bullet points, has made it a running joke in the Pentagon and in Iraq and Afghanistan."

The article, published last week, describes how dependent the nation's military has become on PowerPoint slides, and the dangers of this dependence in executing (or not) engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq. "It's dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control," Brig. Gen. H. R. McMaster, who banned such presentations when he led the successful effort to secure the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar in 2005, said.

"Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable," General McMaster, who likened PowerPoint to an internal threat, said in a phone interview.

Below is a PowerPoint diagram meant to portray the complexity of American strategy in Afghanistan. "When we understand that slide, we'll have won the war," Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the leader of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, reportedly said.

Click image for larger view. Source: The New York Times

Unfortunately, for those of us who have ever suffered through viewing or making a PowerPoint presentation, "'death by PowerPoint,' the phrase used to describe the numbing sensation that accompanies a 30-slide briefing, seems here to stay," the Times noted.

Moscow, We Have a Problem
Standard advice to someone who's lost an important item, like keys or a cell phone, is to "try and remember the last place you saw it." For Soviet lunar researchers responsible for the Lunokhod-1 retroreflector, they knew exactly where they last saw their probe: on the moon. Not exactly the easiest place to go looking.

Soviet ground controllers were tracking the Luna 17's lunar probe near the Mare Imbrium in 1971, 11 months into its mission, when they lost its position. By October of that year, the Soviets gave up and considered the probe lost, switching the mission's focus to the buggy's younger sibling, the Lunokhod-2.

Fast forward to today: researchers from the University of California, San Diego studying the moon's orbit from a New Mexico observatory recently detected a small blot in photographs of the lunar surface, according to Discover's 80beats blog. The researchers aimed a laser at the reflector and hit the jackpot: they had found the wayward Soviet probe.

Even though the Lunokhod-1 retroreflector is settling into middle age, its rediscovery is already proving helpful to scientists studying the moon. The probe has been put to work by researchers charting the moon's position and orbit, as well as other teams studying the moon's core. "It's got a lot to say after almost 40 years of silence," team leader Tom Murphy said of the device. (Source: United Press International)

Top Out-of-Office Auto-Responses
Renowned venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki recently highlighted a list of automated e-mail response messages from self-professed marketing geek Dave Duarte that's been making its way around the business blogs.

Our favorites from Duarte's top 10 list:

• "Thank you for your message, which has been added to a queuing system. You are currently in 352nd place, and can expect to receive a reply in approximately 19 weeks."
• "You are receiving this automatic notification because I am out of the office. If I was in, chances are you wouldn't have received anything at all."
• "Please be patient, and your mail will be deleted in the order it was received."

We don't recommend using any of these.

Related: Ideas for Out-of-Office Replies

A Look at the World's Largest Telescope
The European Southern Observatory (ESO) gave an apt name to what will someday be the world's largest optical device: Extremely Large Telescope.

The mega-sized observatory will measure 138 ft. (42 meters) wide, dwarfing existing large optical devices like the 27-ft. Subaru telescope, according to Space.com. It will enable astronomers to take a closer look at black holes, galaxy formations and dark matter. Its featured mirror is made up of 984 segments and capable of detailed resolutions, which may help in gathering data about other planets.

The telescope's home was recently announced to be Chile's mountainous Cerro Armazones, a site chosen for clear skies and the capacity to work with an existing observatory devised by the ESO, Network World notes.

Naturally, building the big machine will come with a hefty price tag; more than 1 billion euros (US$1.3 billion). It is expected to be up and running by 2018.

E-ELT Trailer (European Extremely Large Telescope) from alien on Vimeo

Cheers.